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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28341198">Elsa</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PringlesTheWriter/pseuds/PringlesTheWriter'>PringlesTheWriter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Also there's some minor swearing, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Bittersweet Ending, But the angst is real for a while there, Canon Compliant, Dealing With Loss, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, For the most part (some minor details might be off), Friends to Lovers, Give it a try - I write terrible summaries, Grieving, Honestly I cried a bit while writing this but it was cathartic after all, It starts with fluff and then punches you in the throat, Light At the End Of the Tunnel, Moving On, Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:35:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,343</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28341198</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PringlesTheWriter/pseuds/PringlesTheWriter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He was her best friend, then he was her boyfriend, then he was dead. </p><p>Snippets from the lives of two background characters in the series we love so much, far away from the oblivious eyes of our hero. A love story in four parts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Colin Creevey/Demelza Robins, Colin dates a guy for a hot minute, Demelza Robins/Original Male Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Colin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My first foray into the world of fanfiction in an extremely long time! If you've found yourself here I'm surprised since it's a story by an unknown author with a fairly obscure pairing, but welcome nonetheless and I hope you enjoy!</p><p>The first two chapters are fluffy as hell. Chapter 3 and 4 cover Final Battle and after, and are therefore fairly angsty, but the story does end on a happy-ish note.</p><p>I always liked Colin as a character, maybe because I was a talkative and annoying child myself. I set out to write this story from his perspective mostly, but Demelza was such an unexplored character she was the perfect person for me to dip my writing feet into. I discovered this ship in my fanfiction heydays and I always had a soft corner for the two of them together, in my headcanon they were definitely together for a while! I didn't expect to ever write a story on them, but this bug bit me a month ago out of the blue and it needed to be written. </p><p>Thank you for reading :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first girl he ever noticed was his next-door neighbour, when he was nine. He could hardly recall her name anymore, but he could just as hardly forget her hair, frizzy near-ringlets in an indeterminate brown that lit up like Fall when the sun hit them just right. He was captivated by the colours; and captivated even more by his need to preserve them.</p><p> </p><p>He remembered straddling the fence with his dad’s old camera, skinny arms trembling as he sought to hoist it up, keep it level and capture her grinning, wide-gapped smile along with the fleeting riot of colour atop her head. As expected, when the flash of the bulb went off, he damn-near fell off his perch, barely rescuing the camera from certain ruin, and the picture came out a blurry, murky haze. He cried for three days straight until his dad decided to teach him how to use it properly, and Colin fell in love.</p><p> </p><p>(With the camera, that is. The girl moved away the following year, and Colin went off to Hogwarts the year after that, and then she ceased to matter except for being a short-lived muse that sparked something within him; and gave him a solution to a fear he’d had ever since his grandma started mixing him up for his father and then eventually died).</p><p> </p><p>He was always a diminutive lad, but irrepressible, like an indiarubber ball. Other kids liked him, but at a distance, because he could chatter away a mile a minute and then suddenly dart off to take a picture of a wee little ladybug over there – a habit they found a little peculiar, a little disconcerting, and possibly even a little exhausting – Colin asked a lot of questions. Colin also always went where his inspiration did, and he didn’t let anything stop him, not even when Geoffrey Brown attempted to pound him into the ground for trying to take a picture of that “brilliant scowl you’ve got going on on your face mate – like a thundercloud!” It is possible the magic saved him – he landed safely up in a tree in the school courtyard when Geoff went to punch him, and Colin got detention and a letter home about scaling trees being against school rules.</p><p> </p><p>And for six months, he took pictures of every shade and nuance of next-door neighbour girl’s hair while she swung on swings in her backyard, laughing with glee, telling him to put the camera down and join her, until he was satisfied, and had an album to press into her sticky little fingers when she told him that her father had gotten a new job and that they were moving.</p><p> </p><p>His mum teased him about only wanting to take pictures of pretty girls, but it wasn’t about that, Colin knew. He had an eye for beauty but he was fairly divorced from the source - the turn of a leaf, the ripple of a pond, the cheeky grin on a classmate’s freckled face, the purplish bruises on Dennis’s legs when he fell out of the Cherry tree for the sixth time in one summer… he wanted to take them, he wanted to hold them close; angles and shadows and lines and hues that made his breath hitch. He couldn’t draw and the less said about his paintings the better; but he had an artist’s eye and a niggling need to document and express everything he saw in the fear that it would pass him by; that he would forget, just like grandma did.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>His first year was kind of a disaster, since he spent a large chunk of it making a fool of himself following Harry Potter around – he knew he was being a bit of a pest, but Harry <em>fascinated</em> him. The entire story did, he was a bonafide Boy Wonder and they shared a House and a common room! He wanted that shade of emerald, and he knew if he ever did make it big as a photographer – what else would he be, anyway? – photos of Harry would be the highlight of his portfolio. Besides, Ron Weasley had some really beautiful hair, and Colin wanted that river of fire too, as well as the ink stains that permanently stained Hermione Granger’s small, fine-boned hands.</p><p> </p><p>To clarify – contrary to popular belief, Colin never had a crush on Harry Potter. It made him roll his eyes whenever someone asked him that, which they usually did, either good-naturedly or otherwise. When, some years later, he would tell his future friends that he liked girls and boys and everything and nothing in between, that was a question he would invariably get. There really was only one person who had never asked him that question… but to talk about that would be getting ahead of himself a tad.</p><p> </p><p>Predictably, his first crush was Ginny Weasley, because she had the same river of fire as her brother running wild on her head, and while she didn’t talk to him much, she didn’t seem inclined to slam a door in his face either. Ginny was soft, and quiet, and withdrawn – all of which seemed highly incongruous with her appearance and mad brothers, but Colin supposed there was always one, in every family – at least until he took a magical photo of her laughing and saw a then-absent spark flicker momentarily and die in her eye. He was obsessed with that flicker, he wanted to bring it back out, and the mystery of Ginny Weasley captured both his mind and his heart until he used up an entire roll of film trying to understand her better. But Ginny rarely smiled, or laughed, and then he got petrified trying to take a picture of a goddamn <em>Basilisk</em> running wild in the school, and he didn’t remember anything at all after that.</p><p> </p><p>When he woke up, Ginny made him a quiet, tearful apology, and he gave her a hug and told her there was nothing to forgive. He understood loneliness – a year into Hogwarts, and he didn’t really have any friends. Sloper, Ritchie and Kirke were nice, but they were markedly different from him, and Dennis, who had always been his best friend, was so very far away. He leaned forward to clumsily press his lips against her cheek – nothing ventured, nothing gained – and was momentarily discomfited at how little he felt when his dry lips brushed her soft skin. Those movies his mum was so fond of really didn’t know what they were on about.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He later came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the movies, it was Ginny Weasley. The mystery was solved when she got on the train laughing and lively like the rest of her brothers, and, combined with the distance over the summer, he found that his feelings for her had faded. She went on to win his respect and he hers, when she hexed him on the train ride back for asking too many questions about Harry, and he laughed, apologized, slung an arm around her and promised to be less annoying with the questions. It was the first time someone had just told him to quit it instead of tolerating him at a distance, and he liked the fact that she was willing to call him out on his shit. She introduced him to Luna Lovegood, who floated in and out of the cabin in a most disconcerting way, and he introduced her to Sloper and Kirke, though they didn’t stay in the cabin long either, and Ritchie came by and sat with them for a bit too, and then eventually the cabin door opened and in walked a new first year, Demelza Robins, and they invited her to stay and she promptly beat them both in a rousing game of Gobstones, and Colin documented every inch of that ride in a myriad of images, and finally, finally Colin felt at home at Hogwarts in a way he really hadn’t been able to the entirety of his first year.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny went off to meet others she knew, and Colin spent most of the ride getting to know Demelza, who was alternatingly quiet and devastatingly sassy, and the hours slipped by during what was already shaping up to be an excellent semester. Even the Dementors didn’t faze him much, though it got all dark and cold and when Ginny returned from visiting her brother she was pale and trembling and held an echo of the frightened little girl from the previous year. He took a picture of her white face against the blackness out of the window because the contrast was so evocative it made him ache, but he put the camera away when she didn’t even glare at him – clearly, this was serious, and after his first year, he was learning.</p><p> </p><p>That was the year he really found friends, true friends, in Ginny and in Demelza, who he promptly dubbed Demmy, and that name stuck. Demmy was a bit of a paradox – like steel coated with silence (a terrible metaphor, but hey, he was <em>twelve</em>). He also sensed that she was lonely, lonelier than he’d been in his first year, a kind of deeper loneliness that he didn’t completely understand but he still felt a sort of need to alleviate. Ginny had her brothers and Luna, but Demmy and he didn’t really have anybody (at least at school), so they sort of banded together, and he figured out early on that she was <em>really cool</em>, but also really guarded, and he didn’t really know why but he wanted to bring those walls down.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>His third year though – that was quite the year. Dennis was sorted into Gryffindor and Colin’s happiness knew no bounds – Dennis was <em>here</em>, with him! He spent a month documenting Dennis in all his favourite spots in the castle, though Colin’s favourites were usually rather mundane (behind a suit of armour next to a stained-glass painting of King Arthurian legend was one such place that had Dennis’s tiny eyebrow reaching his hairline, but he was much too good natured to refuse his brother anything). He also took a picture of Dennis next to the Black Lake for posterity, and the Squid even raised a tentacle in hello. Demmy joined him most days, initially hesitant to encroach on his time with his brother, but Colin wanted her there and he told her as much. She still drew him in, not just because she was intriguing but also because he just plain liked her company, and it didn’t hurt that she was the only person in his life outside of his family who liked his incessant need to talk. Besides, Dennis grew even more excitable at the thought of spending time with one of his brother’s closest friends; so everyone was happy.</p><p> </p><p>Demmy and him had been close the previous year as well, but she was opening up to him more this year, after a solid year of effort on his part. She had layers, he mused, kind of like an onion. He supposed it wasn’t the most flattering of observations, but true to form, she rolled her eyes, called him a prat, but also said thank you – she really was very good at deciphering what he was trying to say even when the words didn’t come out right. She then added that he probably should take lessons on complimenting a bird before he ever got himself a girlfriend or he was liable to get hexed.</p><p> </p><p>But the biggest surprise Colin had in his third year was his first kiss – an entirely unexpected event, which saw him taking Andrea Barnes to Hogsmeade on Valentine’s Day and having her lean over and press her lips to his mid-ramble. He wasn’t sure how it had happened – it was probably the hair, he really was a sucker for beautiful hair in general, and Andrea had pretty blonde waves that she usually kept tied on the nape of her neck with her golden yellow school-tie and thick glasses permanently perched on her nose. Except one sunny day in January, her hair was down as she sat under a tree and Colin couldn’t help himself and took a picture of that silky blonde curtain as it hid her face from his view. She looked up at him quizzically as the click of the camera shattered the silence around them, and Colin couldn’t help the explosion of word vomit that erupted from his mouth as he looked at her (also, no hexing involved, Demmy, see, he wasn’t a complete idiot!). And as he kept talking – and somehow asked her to Hogsmeade for the next possible weekend – she smiled and said alright, and it was only as he was escorting her there, chattering the whole way, that he realised it was Valentine’s Day. So he bought her some chocolate frogs and they split a Butterbeer, and as he was walking her back she leaned over and kissed him. She still tasted like chocolate, Colin thought, a little dazed, and while he never actually asked her to be his girlfriend, she sat beside him at mealtimes once a week and snogged him occasionally (though a bit more often than the shared dinners) until the end of the school year at which she told him it was fun, and he experienced his very first breakup at the hands of a girl he wasn’t aware he was actually dating. Demmy (and Ginny) laughed at him the entire train ride back home, and after a few puzzled moments, he joined in with them.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>His fourth year was a rollercoaster. Umbridge was a holy terror systematically dismantling everything he loved and held dear about Hogwarts, and, as much as he may have fleetingly wanted, he couldn’t ignore it in all good conscience. His fourth year was also the year he decided he needed to grow up a bit, and stop documenting only the beautiful – he needed to capture the ugly, too, to keep it accountable. As Umbridge’s sadism grew, so did the bloody lines etched on the backs of students’ hands, and Colin collected them all. He was particularly proud of the picture of “I must not celebrate liars” etched upon his skin which he’d taken one-handed, and added to his collection of DA memories, a collage of hands dark and fair bearing their own personal brands. Ever the dramatic teenager, he made a scrapbook, and featured four hands the most prominently of all: Harry, the leader; Ginny, the spitfire; Demmy, his… well, <em>his</em>; and Dennis, the youngest in the DA. It broke his heart that Dennis had had his innocence stolen by Umbridge that year, but then again, Dennis was as irrepressible as Colin himself had been. He knew he’d be alright.</p><p> </p><p>As far as his personal life went, Demmy started dating Andrew Kirke, and likewise Ginny and Michael Corner, and so Colin spent a lot of his time in the first half of the school year with Dennis and the rest of the DA since his two friends were otherwise occupied, and Kirke wasn’t even involved with the DA so Demmy usually had to invent some creative stories to explain away her absences to him. This was probably how he had the time to fall into a quasi-relationship with Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw boy a year ahead of him who he had had half an eye on from the very first meeting. Anthony was tall and blonde and quiet, and Colin was short and brown-haired and very, very excitable; but he was also incredibly charming when he wanted to be, and this was the first time Colin felt something in his stomach when he felt soft lips upon his and a tongue in his mouth. He left the corridor with a giddy see you soon and went straight back to the Common Room to talk to Demmy, and when he saw her sitting with Ginny, decided to spill to the both of them. And while Ginny peppered him with questions about his sexual orientation and teased him about whether he too had had a crush on Harry Potter in his first year, Demmy sat back, with an inscrutable look in her dark eyes and a small smile on her lips. He was seized with a desire to know what that look in her eyes had meant – and that desire shook him a little. He was also seized with a desire to track Anthony down again – and that desire was a lot easier to understand. It was all very confusing and exciting and frankly, Colin didn’t know what to do about any of it, but he couldn’t wait to find out.</p><p> </p><p>The thing with Anthony fizzled out a few weeks later, but his attention was slowly drawn more and more to Demmy these days anyway, and at some point in that year, even before Anthony and him called it quits, Colin had a dream about Demmy, where he was holding her and kissing her and drowning in her strawberry sweetness. And he woke up from that dream out of breath and trembling, and with a sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he realised that he’d fallen for her in the background almost without realising it – and she was in a relationship with his roommate, while he was… possibly in a relationship of his own too, they’d never really discussed it, which worsened the guilt. So he withdrew from everyone and everything, and then the DA broke up and Umbridge took over and Anthony faded away even more than he had before their ‘break-up’ – was it even a break-up when an unacknowledged thing ceased to continue with no fanfare involved? - and none of it really mattered except for the guilt and longing in his stomach whenever he got a glimpse of Demmy, so he pulled away even more and resolutely decided he was going to just take nature photographs this year because people were too confusing for him.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny had been growing increasingly distant from them all year anyway, what with Quidditch practice and her boyfriend (to say nothing of the long disappearances over the Christmas holidays without as much as a note, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves), but Colin was in enough of a quandary over his <em>best</em> friend to not even notice. Demmy was the only person in the entire school (excepting Dennis) who truly understood him, and he had obviously always loved her, but - the fact that she was brilliant and beautiful and far too good for Kirke (and for him!) had clearly snuck up on him. He’d resolved to stay away from her until his stomach stopped playing leapfrog with his intestines upon catching a glimpse of her, but that didn’t last – she tracked him down one sunset when he was frustratedly trying to get the glint on the iced-over lake just right and sat down next to him, and he could feel her luminous eyes burning a hole in him even when she was looking at a copy of <em>Which Broomstick</em> in her lap. His ears felt hot, and there was an echo of a tremble in his arms that he hadn’t felt since he was nine and fell off the fence for the first time. <em>‘Oh, to hell with this!’</em> he thought – or possibly exclaimed, since she cocked an eyebrow at him – and spun around.</p><p> </p><p>“Can you – I just – it needs <em>more</em>,” he said, gesticulating at the lake behind him.</p><p> </p><p>Demelza put the magazine down and looked at him composedly. “You’re going to have to use your words, Col, I’m not sure what you want me to do.”</p><p> </p><p>“Just… look out that way, Dee, please?” He wanted to go on about colours and shadows and snowfall and the juxtaposition of her inky hair against the riotous sunset, but his throat felt tight, and for the first time in his life Colin felt at a loss for words. He half expected her to call him out on his taciturnity, but she didn’t say anything – Dee (since when was she Dee? But Demmy was for everyone, and that moment was for him) always had been a girl of few words anyway. He wondered if he was fancying the same inscrutable look in her eyes from earlier in the year, but then she looked away, and her face softened, and the lump in Colin’s throat just grew and he couldn’t stop clicking.</p><p> </p><p>“All done,” he said hoarsely sometime later, lips suddenly dry, and made to sit next to her, asking himself if he had imagined the flash in Dee’s cinnamon eyes as they sat quietly, hip to hip, under the shadow of the oak with the rapidly darkening sky in the background.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>And then Dee broke up with Andrew Kirke, and Colin’s already hyperactive insides went into overdrive.</p><p> </p><p>He was spending more and more time with her, all intentions to pull himself away forgotten and abandoned like his nature photography project – Colin <em>liked </em>people, and he definitely liked Dee. He took pictures of her when she went flying in the evenings and felt his heart hurt almost when he saw her laugh and whoop, over and over, as she whizzed past over his head. He was unaware if even Ginny knew, or if this was just one of Dee’s surprisingly plentiful secrets, that she shared only with him, and the thought made him feel warmer than even Butterbeer could manage. She braided her hair into tight coils most days now, when she flew, always when the pitch was empty and no one else could see, and he felt his fingers itch as he contemplated undoing the braids and watching her jet-black hair tumble past her shoulders. He spent time with the Demmy side of her too, of course, losing every game of Wizard’s Chess to her for a whole week, even the one time Ginny and him teamed up against her, heroically trying to take notes for the two of them in History of Magic while she let out soft snores, taking an entire album’s worth of pictures of the Weasley Twins’ great escape while Demmy and Ginny whooped and cheered along with the rest of the student body (though that last one happened <em>after</em> and not before, but he was getting ahead of himself again). He wasn’t sure what it was that made him ask her to be his newest photography subject one day – he could admit, a little shamefacedly, that he hadn’t really asked people before if he could take pictures – but he approached the project with all the seriousness that Da Vinci had approached the Mona Lisa (and if that was a little overdramatic, he was fourteen, so screw that, he was allowed).</p><p> </p><p>This was the difference between Demmy and Dee, sometimes when they spent time together, just the two of them, she became much more prone to silence, and so did he, though it was always comfortable. It quietened his thoughts. She looked at him, really looked at him – he felt <em>seen</em>, and more nervous than he really should be, given the whole best friend asking for a reasonable favour thing - and then asked why. And there he was, stammering and tripping over his own words – God, he was being so obvious, she just had to know – and finally something in him compelled him to be honest and he had never been afraid to just say what he was thinking before, so he decided, again, <em>to hell with it</em>, and told her.</p><p> </p><p>“I collect beauty, Dee. And moments to remember. And looking at you I see both, and I want it. I don’t ever want to forget you and I don’t want to forget this, sitting with you.”</p><p> </p><p>He both loved and hated that he was terrible at knowing what she was thinking when she looked at him with those searching eyes. They’d gone a caramel whiskey in the firelight, like the stuff his dad liked to drink once a week on the porch in the winter, watching the snow slowly drift to the ground.</p><p> </p><p>“Why call me Dee?” she asked, in response.</p><p> </p><p>“Because right now you’re not Demmy.” He replied, wondering if the sudden tension was just him and his newest companion, wishful thinking, again.</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” she said, small smile on her lips, and he pulled out his ever-present camera before she changed her mind. It was late, Ginny had come and left, gone up to her bed after Quidditch practice, and there were very few people left in the Common Room. Kirke had given him a look when he’d walked past the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder, but then he’d shrugged in what looked like acceptance before going up the stairs. He didn’t look particularly broken-hearted about the whole idea and Colin felt almost indignant on Dee’s behalf, even as he thought, glumly, that there wasn’t anything for Kirke to get broken-hearted over anyway.</p><p> </p><p>Everything changed the next night, when he waited for the Common Room to clear out again, lightly touching her elbow to indicate that she should stay when Ginny started packing up to go upstairs and answering her unspoken question by telling her he had something to show her. She seemed to accept this, not asking why he hadn’t done so when they’d worked on Transfiguration and Potions for the entire evening, despite the fact that Ginny had left them almost an hour earlier, after a not entirely convincing yawn (he figured he was in for an inquisition over breakfast the next day, since Demmy usually made it down less than ten minutes before class and Ginny and he were both early risers, but that was a problem for a different day).</p><p> </p><p>He felt the air shift, and he knew he was going to do this now, even though they’d just spent an hour reading magazines and writing letters and not really talking about anything of substance other than classes and the news. Silently, he pulled out the picture he’d taken of her the previous evening, which he’d developed over his free period earlier in the day. Dee was sitting with her knees drawn up next to the fireplace, her dark hair pooled intimately in the nape of her neck, the light flickering in her eyes. They watched, together, as the Dee in the picture looked back at the camera, softly smiling, and then back in the light, a faint blush on her cheek; and as he looked over and saw the same blush beginning to creep over her face, he knew, with a sudden blinding clarity, that he was in love with her and that she felt the same even though he knew she wouldn’t be ready to say it anytime soon (<em>she had a funny hangup over the word and really, Colin, now was not the time to psychoanalyse the pretty girl</em>), and since he’d never been very good at curbing his impulses: he leaned over, both their hands inches apart, fingers nearly touching, so close he could feel the warmth of her thigh burning against his, and kissed her.</p><p> </p><p>She kissed him back, and oh boy was he <em>screwed.</em></p><p> </p><p>She pulled back, slightly, and he couldn’t tell how long it had been since they’d been pressed together; it simultaneously felt like forever and no time at all. He could still feel the warmth of her breath dancing over his lip and the silence between them grew until it was roaring in his ears but, strangely enough, he wasn’t nervous or disconcerted the way he’d been all year even though he had no intention of letting the silence continue forever. Dee was watching him, and he sensed that she was giving him time to make the first move, but if he didn’t, she probably would. She just understood, instinctively, that he didn’t want to be passive about this the way he had with Andrea and Anthony. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and…</p><p> </p><p>“Those movies of mum’s knew what they were on about after all,” fell out instead of what he’d been planning to say. His cheeks flushed.</p><p> </p><p>“What?” he had startled a laugh out of her, and the sparkle in her eyes made his liver do a backflip as if to say <em>“hey, I’m here too!”</em></p><p> </p><p>“Nothing. Just – ah fuck it. You’ve got me going loopy all year Dee – be my girlfriend?”</p><p> </p><p>He supposed the flying tackle she gave him as she snogged him halfway into the cushions was a yes.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Demelza, I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another fluffy chapter, yay! </p><p>I honestly wanted to do the first and second chapters as a single chapter initially, but I ended up writing them in both perspectives, so decided to split them up into two. I posted both chapters together because I think they play off each other really well.</p><p>There's a slight worry that I might have made them a bit insufferable, but I tried to make them as 'normal' as possible. I hope I succeeded - they're still teenagers, so that can explain away the theatrics, I suppose :D</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She wasn’t sure when she’d started to fall for the most excitable boy in the entire school, but she had an inkling it had been brewing in the background for years.</p><p> </p><p>She had always been a bit of a lonely child, growing up – living on the outskirts of a small Muggle village that seemed to be comprised almost solely of retirees, with a busy mid-level Ministry bureaucrat for a father who loved her but seemed a little distant all the same. She supposed it was because she was the spitting image of her mother, a spitfire of a Muggle who had died bringing her into the world. She often wondered if things would’ve been different if her mother had survived, if her father would have worked lesser hours, and have had fewer lines in the corner of his weary brown eyes. Given that her closest companion in her formative years had been herself, there was perhaps no surprise that Demelza craved noise and chatter and excitement. Maybe that was what drew her to flying and to Quidditch – the adrenaline rush. Maybe that was also what drew her to Colin.</p><p> </p><p>But yes, she hadn’t had any friends growing up, really, it had always been the two of them, her father and her… and also Heather, she supposed. Heather was the quiet lynchpin, a friend-cum-part-time-housekeeper that had held the family together ever since Demelza could remember. She had taught Demelza reading and writing and arithmetic, and had kept the house in functioning order, and endured Demelza’s constant complaining that it wasn’t fair that she had to wait a whole entire year to go to Hogwarts just because she was born four days past an arbitrary cut-off, and never stopped her from exploring the woods or flying in the backyard for hours on end. Small wonder that once Demelza had gone off to Hogwarts her father and Heather had gotten married.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She had liked Colin from the moment she met him, his enthusiasm was infectious, and it soothed her in a way no one, including her, could understand. She liked how he was so confident and sure of himself no matter what anyone said, and how he was loyal to a fault to things that mattered. He marched to the beat of his own drum and she liked that. Ginny was a good friend, and she got along very well with all her classmates too, but Colin was different and always had been. Colin was hers. She just knew him, and he knew her. Colin was the only one who knew about her complicated relationship with her father and Heather and how sometimes Demelza felt a bit jealous that when her father looked at Heather he saw just Heather, something he couldn’t do with Demelza without seeing her mother; and how she had been so lonely growing up, how flying had always felt like an escape from her humdrum circumstances, how she envied Colin’s relationship with Dennis because she knew she could never have that with her new baby half-brother Paul, how she hated that her birthday always got overlooked in the general rush of settling into the new school year every September, how she hated the words ‘I love you’ because with her father that had always felt less like affection and more like obligation. He’d never looked at her differently, never judged her for the things that came out of her mouth. He invited her to spend time with Dennis and him instead, and got her Ice Mice and Fizzing Whizzbees the whole year he got to go to Hogsmeade before she could without her even asking him once, always surprised her with a Chocolate Frog or a present in the Common Room every year on her birthday, promised her he’d never, ever say ‘I love you’ to her, not even as a joke or a throwaway; and once she had her broom at Hogwarts he would sit on the pitch and give her company while she flew so she could share that feeling of freedom with him, over and over.</p><p> </p><p>He was warmth, every last square inch of him, and she revelled in it.</p><p> </p><p>She didn’t have dreams about Colin or swoon over him the way nearly every girl with a pulse – including her, if she was honest - did over Oliver Wood or any of the other cute senior boys, even though Ginny had asked her, once or twice, what was up with the two of them. She laughed over his typical boyish cluelessness about Andrea Barnes with Ginny; and went to Hogsmeade with Andrew because he had a nice smile and she felt it would be fun to kiss it, and indulgently listened to Colin’s lightning fast incoherent rambling over Anthony’s soft lips without nary a twinge. She liked how he spoke when he was excited, tripping over his words because his mouth couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. He wasn’t just a boy, he wasn’t just a friend, he was Colin, and that’s how she liked it.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>And then Colin began to pull away from her, and her stomach dropped through her legs, and she realised that she was in the middle of a full-blown crush before she’d even spotted the beginning. But this was different, somehow, because, well, he wasn’t just a boy and he wasn’t just a friend, he was <em>Colin</em>. This ignoring business wouldn’t last, she knew, eventually he would crumble and wouldn’t stay away for long – and if he wouldn’t come to her, she would go to him. So she let him take pictures of her next to the lake, and they spent an evening together in silence, and that was all it took for her to know, to know almost before Colin himself knew. She broke up with Andrew Kirke, and, sensing that she would need to give Col some time to catch up, settled down to wait with a patience she herself didn’t know she possessed. Besides, her composure was visibly driving him nuts, and Demelza was honest enough to admit that a wicked little part of her enjoyed watching his Adam’s apple bob and his voice crack and his words get even more rushed around her.</p><p> </p><p>When it finally happened, it was almost anticlimactic, and true to form for Col, a camera was involved. She was very good and patient all the way until he actually asked, she mused, but also, she was a <em>Gryffindor. </em>A slow smile spread across her face as she remembered how his breath whooshed out of him when she pinned him to the couch and kissed him with every ounce of the pent up attraction that had been building over… oh, the last couple years, if she was honest.</p><p> </p><p>After what felt simultaneously like an eternity and no time at all, they broke apart. Col looked electrified, his blonde curls standing on end from his flushed face, but his voice was steady when he asked, “how long?”</p><p> </p><p>“Honestly? I have no idea. I think I was halfway gone before I even realised I liked you like that, Col. So I’d love to be cheesy and say ‘from the moment I met you’ but we both know that’s not entirely true or I’d have hexed Andrea Barnes or Anthony Goldstein for getting there first. But at the same time… you’ve always been <em>mine</em> – in a non-creepy, non-possessive, non-crazy stalker way, of course.” Her voice always did get dryer the more het up she got, and a rare bout of verbal diarrhoea was definitely making an appearance. Why on Earth was she nervous <em>now</em>, when she’d been cool and collected the entire time Colin had been a bumbling mess?</p><p> </p><p>Colin laughed. “You can always stalk me, Dee,” he teased, pulling her closer when she flushed and turned away from him. “I like seeing you flustered over me. Real boost to a bloke’s ego, especially one who’s been a moron when you’ve been around this whole year. Besides,” he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and continued, voice softening, “I think you’ve been mine since I met you, too.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Being Colin’s girlfriend was kind of the same as being his best friend, really. Ginny gave her an appraising look when she finally made it down to breakfast the next day, and told her she expected every last detail at night, but she then just grinned and wished them the best of luck before changing the topic to Quidditch practice, Umbridge, and how Michael was beginning to get on her nerves. Demelza wasn’t entirely fooled, Colin’s ears were still red and she knew they usually hung out for an hour in the mornings before she herself made it down, and Ginny could be utterly merciless. An hour would be enough to decimate even the usually irrepressible Colin. As for the rest of their House, the ones who knew them thought they’d been dating for ages already. Andrew had nodded and given them a thumbs up when he spotted them at breakfast that first day, which was something she knew Colin had been a bit nervous over, but it seemed that there was very little drama attached to this relationship all around. Most un-teenager-like of them, she thought, wryly. They did however make sure to take Dennis aside to break the news, and he went on to try and crush both of them around the ribcage in his excitement, chattering full tilt all the while. They still spent most of their time together, sometimes with Ginny and more often with Dennis, still went flying in the evenings and taking pictures in the sunlight, and it seemed like very little had changed.</p><p> </p><p>What had changed were the addition of snogging sessions, either on the couch in the Common Room when most people had gone to bed, or lakeside under a tree on the weekends once the weather warmed up some, or the occasional broom cupboard or hidden corridor. Colin seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the layout of the school, after all his exploring for hidden photography treasures. Or, well, encyclopaedic compared to hers, and they never really got spotted so that was good enough for her. He was as eager and enthusiastic about snogging as he was about literally everything else, and they’d definitely clanked their teeth together more than a couple of times in the beginning, but it also felt so utterly right to just laugh and move back in for another try. Besides, Colin was a quick learner, and kissing him definitely made her belly twinge in interesting ways, especially when he got bolder as time went on and let his explorations move to her cheek and ear and neck and jaw. She flushed as she remembered the time they got caught by Hermione Granger on patrol – losing ten points was bad enough, but the lecture about unseemly behaviour was worse, as was the reminder that the Inquisitorial Squad was on the prowl, and they really didn’t want more detention with Umbridge… to which they wholeheartedly agreed. Their hands definitely couldn’t take it.</p><p> </p><p>The end of the year loomed nearer, and Demelza felt a sudden, unaccountable loneliness. She didn’t want to be away from Colin over the whole summer again, back to a home where she didn’t quite fit, not when there was so much more that bore exploring between them. She was sitting with him and Dennis at the side of the Lake the weekend after exams were over, idly tossing bits of bread to the Giant Squid, when she felt her eyes well up all of a sudden listening to both boys, with their identically clear and quick voices (Dennis perhaps still a touch squeakier than his older brother) chattering about home and the summer ahead. She looked out over to the Lake to control her reaction, but she felt Colin, who had grown silent the second she turned her head, look at her. “Give us a mo’, will you Dennis?” he said, and Dennis, still oblivious, got to his feet, going, “ah I’m being a bit of a gooseberry am I? I’ll leave you two to talk, or snog, or whatever it is you two do,” as he winked at Colin and ran after some of his other friends.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s wrong, Dee?” he asked gently, rubbing her knuckles, “Summer plans got you down?”</p><p> </p><p>“I just… I don’t want to go home, and what kind of a terrible person does that make me? I do miss my dad and Heather and Paul, but I just… square peg, round hole, and I don’t want to be uncomfortable all summer, you know?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll miss you too, and maybe… if your dad comes to pick you up from the station, let’s ask him if you can come stay with us for a bit? If you want to, of course. My mum would love it if you finally came over. Of course, we’d have to figure out how you’d get there – maybe there’s a public Floo somewhere nearby, or we can set up a connection for a day or two so you can get back and forth, I think the train would be too far… I can bunk in with Dennis, so you’ll have your own room. And maybe we can travel around a bit, almost fifteen the two of us, I’m sure my parents will let us and what your dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him. What say?” he nudged her hip with his.</p><p> </p><p>She kissed him in response. There were no words, really.</p><p> </p><p>That summer was the best of her life, despite the fact that she couldn’t fly past the first month of it. She spent the first month of her holiday maniacally working on her homework and practicing her Chaser skills (hopeful of getting on the team, finally) and helping Heather out with the baby, with every spare moment going into phone calls with Colin (thank Merlin for the relatively Muggle friendly dwellings they both lived in) and counting down the days till they could be together.</p><p> </p><p>She’d met Mrs. Creevey (‘call me Margaret, lovey, Mrs. Creevey’s my mother-in-law’) before of course, but she spent a lot more time with the tiny blonde woman over the summer, and took to her instantly. She was warm and motherly and chattery, so exactly like Colin but also such a mum, packing them picnics and cooking Sunday roasts for the family, and her easy acceptance, very much like her sons, was what Demelza needed. Mr. Creevey (‘it’s William, or Will’s fine too’) was a bit quieter than the rest of his boisterous family, but his eyes were warm and crinkly and he often played chess with her in the evenings and gave her tips on how to beat Colin hollow (not that Demelza needed the help, especially against such an atrocious player, but Colin’s increasingly dramatic cries along the lines of “My dad and my girlfriend ganging up on me! How will I ever survive! The betrayal! The agony!” made for some highly entertaining evenings).</p><p> </p><p>They went for picnics, sometimes the two of them, sometimes with Dennis, occasionally with some of Dennis’ childhood mates, very occasionally with some of Colin’s (the few he had remained in contact with), who ribbed him about landing himself a way prettier girl than they ever expected he would. They went cycling around the countryside as fast as their legs could take them so Demelza could get as close as possible to flying again, occasionally went into town to buy ice cream and got increasingly more adventurous with their flavour combinations, and took nearly three albums worth of pictures in a week alone – pictures of the two of them, taken by Dennis, pictures of Demelza, taken by Colin in all kinds of places and lights and compositions, and even some of Colin, taken under his expert tutelage by his laughing girlfriend who insisted that being a model was very hard work and he could bloody well do it, for a change.</p><p> </p><p>But the best part, the very best part, was when everyone would turn in for the night and switch off the lights, and Demelza would slide between the covers of <em>Colin’s bed, I’m in Colin’s bed, and he’s just across the hall, </em>and watch the moonlight play across the ceiling as her heart gave a little thrill, and then the door would open and with a whispered “alright, Dee?” in would sneak her adorable boyfriend to wrap her up in his thin arms under the blankets, and they would lie there for hours and talk, and sometimes not talk, and sometimes more than talk, and then sleep, just a little, until around four in the morning when the little alarm clock would go off and Col would sneak back to his cot in Dennis’ room before his dad got up to do his deliveries. He’d kiss her, lightly, every morning without fail, and she’d mumble something about coming back to bed, and he’d laugh and kiss her again, and she’d watch, sleepily, as he snuck back out to where he came from, always with a little wave at the door, and then she’d snuggle into bed again and let her thoughts and memories and the smell of him lull her back to sleep for a few more hours.</p><p> </p><p>They spoke about You-Know-Who, and how Harry and the DA were finally vindicated after all, and wondered if Ginny had recovered after her adventure at the Department of Mysteries – Ginny rarely wrote much in the summer, whatever letters they’d exchanged had talked determinedly of other things, like Dean Thomas, and she’d been close mouthed before they’d all parted, too. Thinking of Ginny also meant addressing out loud that they’d drifted away from her, and for Demelza to admit that she felt like the only person she had in her life really was him, and maybe Dennis, and how sad was that, really? (He hugged her even closer after that, and made to say something, but decided against it). They talked about how they wanted their lives to look after Hogwarts – the world famous photographer and Quidditch player couple! Though more realistically they figured they’d move in together in a too-tiny bedsit in London, barely paying the bills between them with her Magical Games and Sports Ministry job and his Prophet photographer gig, before having had enough and moving somewhere a bit less urban and a bit more spacious and cheaper. They’d get married at some point – probably in the little church in the town and have their reception catered by the ice cream place and adopt two cats and travel the world (before adopting the cats). They’d have two kids, and they’d be Gryffindors, and best friends, like how Colin and Dennis were. They’d make a list of adventures and experiences they wanted to try, and cross them off, one by one…</p><p> </p><p>It was on one of those nights, lying with her head on his bare chest and tracing patterns on his pale skin while he played with her wild hair and kept up a steady stream of word vomit that was so quintessentially Colin, that she couldn’t keep it in anymore, and looked up at him, her heart full to bursting, and cut him off midsentence. “Col?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, Dee?”</p><p> </p><p>“I just… I need you to know, this has been the best summer of my life.”</p><p> </p><p>“Mine too, sweetheart. Having you here, having you home – the worst bits of summer have always been having to choose, you know? Choosing between my Muggle and magical lives… but with you here, it’s made me realise: you encapsulate magical life for me, and while I do wish we could do magic right now - silencing charm for example so we didn’t have to whisper – this is perfect, the way it is. It’s a cliché to say it, but you bring magic wherever you go, Dee.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m in love with you, Col.” The words slipped out her mouth before she even knew what she was saying, and she felt her heart clench and her limbs stiffen. The air had shifted, and she knew without looking at him that he was looking at her, carefully, and a little surprised. “I love you because with you it’s never obligation… it never could be, I know that.” The silence went on, not uncomfortable, more anticipatory. She glanced towards him, to see a small smile on his lips. “Also, you can talk now. I’m done.”</p><p> </p><p>“You know, when I was growing up, mum used to show us these movies where the hero eventually got the girl and it was always dramatic and butterflies and violins and the girl always sat around and waited on the bloke and it always seemed… kind of silly to me. And then when I kissed you for the first time it started to make sense. But you’re not a princess in an ivory tower, you’re your own person. You’re incredibly smart, and you could probably wallop my arse without trying, and you’re amazingly strong, and I know what it must’ve taken for you to fight yet another battle and you’ve done it on your own, Dee. It’s weird, but – you were Demmy back when I didn’t have a clue about how I felt about you, and then you’ve been Dee ever since I’ve had the stones to accept the fact that I’d had a crush on you, and now that I finally, finally get to tell you I love you, I want another name to mark the moment – just for the two of us, just when we’re alone… I’m in love with you Dee, Demmy, Demelza, Elsa. I kind of like Elsa, actually. Sounds a little wild, like a nymph. And it does sort of conjure up this image of a Scandinavian fairy, all blonde and blue-eyed, but that’s even better, because it’s unexpected, like you. Does that work? Can I call you Elsa? I won’t do it around other people, but just in moments like this one?”</p><p> </p><p>And, nodding, she burst out laughing at how characteristically Colin that response had been. Only Colin would jump six topics in five seconds to tell her he loved her.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next year back was OWL year for Colin, and the first year on the Quidditch team for Demelza, and time was a precious commodity running low. Colin had never been particularly academically oriented, perfectly content with straight As (and a couple Es), but he felt that he probably needed to put in a bit more effort this year. Demelza, on the other hand, approached Quidditch with fanatical enthusiasm, and as much as he would’ve liked to sit in the stands and watch her practice, he figured using those evenings to knock out as much work as possible was probably the smarter move. He worked industriously all throughout her practices, usually meeting her at the door when practice was done to walk back up to the Common Room with her (with occasional detours in hidden passages and broom cupboards along the way), and in a parody of the summer they would go upstairs with the rest of the students but sneak back down in the middle of the night to spend some time near the fireplace for a couple of hours, before going back up to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>But she really, really wanted to sleep with him again, and do more than just sleep too, though it wasn’t until nearly a year into their relationship the idea of where to go struck her and she felt incredibly silly. The room with the DA meetings – all they had to do was pick a time when no one was likely to be using it and they could probably squeeze out at least a night or two (she really wished it had struck her earlier instead of close to Christmas break, but oh well, at least it would be a nice holiday for both of them, since they hadn’t been able to go off for so much as a day trip over the summer. Apparently fifteen wasn’t old enough for even the incredibly permissive Creeveys). Ginny had elected to spend Christmas at home this year, and Dennis was going back for Christmas the way both boys usually did, though this year Colin had told his parents he’d planned to stay back to study. They were finally alone.</p><p> </p><p>So Demelza waited for the first day of the holidays to come, and as Colin came down the stairs to meet her in the Common Room so they could breakfast together, she surprised him with a note tied to a rose (that was one of the things she liked about him – he wasn’t ashamed of enjoying typically ‘feminine’ things, like flowers, and he’d told her over the summer that roses were his favourite) telling him that was one of his Christmas gifts that year. He kissed her thank you and tucked the flower behind her ear so he could “look at two pretty things at once” – she forgave him the cheesy line on account of it being the holidays – before opening the note, which just said <em>‘8pm, Common Room, xx Happy Christmas Col’</em>. He asked her all day what she meant, but she refused to spill, telling him to make sure to get a head start on homework and exam prep while she went for an evening fly.</p><p> </p><p>At 8pm Demelza was holding a little conjured basket full of food and standing by the fireplace in the empty Common Room, the few students staying behind having gone down for dinner already, when she saw him come down from his room. They’d both dressed in ugly Christmas sweaters, and she’d procured an antler headband for her hair. He came up to her, beaming, “oh my God, Dee, this is amazing! Where did you get the food? I love the idea of a picnic by the fire, by the way!”</p><p> </p><p>“I got the food from the Great Hall and Professor McGonagall asked me what on Earth I was doing so I told her you were studying up here and I wanted to eat with you and give you company – she must’ve been hitting the eggnog because she smiled and showed me how to conjure the basket, even gave me five points for conjuring the basket correctly – but that’s just in case she asks you if you enjoyed the picnic tomorrow over dinner, they’re doing this ‘one big table for everyone staying back’ thing so there’s no real sneaking out possible. We’re not staying here, though. Just come quickly before someone gets back.” And she yanked him out of the Common Room – shoving the basket in his hands and motioning for him to simultaneously shush and hurry up.</p><p> </p><p>“Where are we going?” he asked, struggling to keep up, but fell silent, bemusedly, when she glared at him and pulled his hand to make him move faster. It’s when they got up to the seventh floor that it all clicked for Colin and his mouth fell open in amazement as he looked at her. “Are you serious?” he exclaimed, laughing in disbelief and a not a little joy. She grinned and paced the patch of corridor opposite the painting with the trolls, up and down, before taking his hand and pushing the door open-</p><p> </p><p>And stepping inside Colin’s bedroom, shutting the door behind them. The door obligingly locked itself in response to a thought in her head.</p><p> </p><p>“Happy Christmas, Col. When I first thought about it, I thought we could do the grounds, or somewhere outdoors, like a nice field or something… but when it comes down to it, this is the room I was in when I finally found the courage to tell you I loved you, when our relationship got to that step that I never thought I would ever be able to reach, and I never could’ve, without you. This room has held some of the happiest moments of my life so far. And tonight… if you want… I want to go to the next step after that, with you, here. I want everything with you… you’re everything to me, Colin, as unbearably cheesy as it sounds. Besides, I spent ninety percent of my time in this room this summer hopelessly turned on, and I think I just associate this room with arousal now.” She finished dryly, winking at him.</p><p> </p><p>Colin’s ocean-blue eyes were shimmering more than usual as he looked at her, smiling, voice catching in his throat. “I am so unbelievably in love with you, Elsa… and I can’t wait to show you how much.” He set the basket on the floor and in one fluid move picked her up, bridal style (who knew Colin could be that strong? And that charming? Not her, that’s for sure) to carry her to the bed and climb in after her.</p><p> </p><p>“I love you, I love you, I love you…” trailing kisses down her throat, one thing leading to another until he finally pulled back, slightly, to look her in the eye, “Elsa – are you sure?”</p><p> </p><p>She pulled him back down to her. “I’m sure.”</p><p> </p><p>They didn’t get to the food until much later that night.</p><p> </p><p>They made use of the DA meeting room most days that break, turning it into different scenes from different places, but Colin’s room remained Demelza’s favourite. One of the nights that they were lying there, mirror images from the summer, with his hands stroking her hair as usual, Colin let out a sudden laugh. “Going back home this summer without you is going to be hell – I don’t think I can be in this room ever again without popping a stiffy, immediately.” She turned and looked at him with a devious smile, “Maybe I can visit again…?” They grinned at each other and again, they were kissing, and then they broke apart and Demelza slowly drifted off to sleep while he spoke to her about everything and nothing. Colin looked at her, lying half on him, on her side with her legs folded slightly beneath her, a shaft of moonlight falling directly on her milky skin and her cupid’s bow of a mouth, while her wild hair was strewn all over him like tendrils of the night sky, and he had never seen anything more beautiful.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The break ended, and real life came crashing back in, but it was all still wonderful even if not as idyllic as they’d experienced over Christmas break. Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup after Demelza played the best game of her life, scoring ten goals, and Colin screamed himself hoarse cheering over both her and Ginny with the game-winning catch. They saw Ginny and Harry kiss at the celebration and laughed over how tenacious Ginny Weasley had won over her childhood crush after all. They worked out a study schedule that rewarded each of them with kisses for getting work done and then reworked the schedule after they realised they were spending more time kissing and less time studying. It was, on balance, a pretty perfect year…</p><p> </p><p>And then Dumbledore died, and everything went to shit.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Demelza, II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is where this story really begins to earn that Angst tag. I actually wrote this entire story for this one chapter - I was in a similar situation where I lost someone I really loved in my life and I was an absolute loon for years after it happened. My therapist recommended I write about it, and so it formed inspiration for a lot of my original writing, but also fanfiction. Some dialogue in there is borrowed from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. </p><p>So yeah - trigger warnings for character death, loss and grieving.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>‘Yep, on balance, a really fucking shit year,’</em> thought Demelza, grimly, as she ran back out of the Great Hall moments after the fighting began. It had been five minutes and she’d already lost track of Colin in the resulting explosions and chaos, and her heart was lodged firmly in her throat, a heady cocktail of dread and fear and adrenaline rushing through her veins.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>---- Flashback ----</strong>
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  <em>“I’m not leaving Hogwarts, Dee.” Colin said softly but firmly as they waited to evacuate with the rest of the school, fingers laced together. “You should go, but I won’t.” </em>
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  <em>“Don’t be ridiculous, Col!” she hissed angrily, but he was implacable.</em>
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  <em>“All that’s needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. I’ve survived this year in Hogwarts and that’s nothing short of a miracle and you know it. Dennis and I owe your dad more than I can say for the papers but those won’t hold up in the real world if You-Know-Who wins, Demelza. And I just… I can’t. I need to do this for Dennis. And myself. And the life I want with you, Dee. I want everything with you...” She looked at him, really looked at him, pale but resolute, his blonde curls on end, and capitulated. There was no time to fight.</em>
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  <em>“Fine. But then I’m staying too.” Now he looked angry. “You can’t – you’re a <span class="u">fifth</span> year, and you’re too young!” </em>
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  <em>“I’m two weeks younger than you, so don’t give me that bullshit Colin. I told you before. I can’t leave you, I’m not going to leave you, so don’t you <span class="u">dare</span> try to make me!” frustrated tears spilled out of her eyes as she squeezed his hand.</em>
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  <em>After a beat, he nodded sharply, mouth tense. They quietly made their way ahead where Dennis stood near the other fourth years and beckoned him to the side to say their see-you-laters, shooting down his protests firmly and melting away behind a column as the professors grew closer.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>They stood together, silent but watchful, as the crowd thinned, only turning to look at each other when it became clear that they hadn’t been missed during the evacuation. A beat stretched between them before they were in each other’s arms, foreheads pressed together, tears falling from their eyes.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you, Elsa. If this ends up being my last chance to say it… I just want you to know, that loving you has been the greatest gift I’ve ever had. I’m not going to say goodbye, I’m going to say see you on the other side, because we’re going to make it, and we’re going to have the life we dreamed of, bright-eyes. I love you, I love you, I love you…”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Don’t you fucking dare leave me Colin, and I swear I’ll do my best to come back to you, too. You saved me, you <span class="u">are</span> my heart. I love you more than I ever thought I could be capable of loving anyone or anything in this lifetime or the next. You come back to me, and we’ll laugh at these overly dramatic things we said to each other. This isn’t goodbye, Col, this is au revoir. I love you, be safe, I love you…”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>--- End Flashback ---</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>She made it to the grounds, having mostly avoided direct spell-fire so far, helping out in other battles from behind debris as much as she could. Colin, Colin, where the fuck was Colin? She was getting frantic now, he was nowhere to be seen, and she taking bigger and bigger risks trying to get him in her line of sight, popping out from behind cover every time she saw a flash of blonde.</p><p> </p><p>And suddenly the chunk of stone she was hiding behind was blasted apart, and she scrambled back and to her feet just in time, screaming “Stupefy!” four times in quick succession, wand snapping out four times, but her hands were shaking and her aim was off in a way it hadn’t been since she was eight years old, and now she was duelling this adult man in a black cloak and a white mask who was sneering and taunting her but she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything over the roar of various creatures, human or otherwise, spells like artillery blanketing the night sky and the cries of the dead and dying all around.</p><p> </p><p>She dodged two cutting curses – <em>thanks, Harry, for all that Bludger practice last year</em>, she thought irreverently, and jumped straight in the path of the third, a whip of fire curling around her calf and ankle and making her fall straight down to the ground with a howl of pain. She petrified her opponent when he stopped to crow and cast a few Episkeys to staunch the flow of blood, but that battle had already taken a lot out of her and now she’d been spotted, and Demelza had a sickening feeling in her stomach that she wasn’t going to make it. <em>I’m sorry, Col… I really am.</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>She lost track of time and of the spells she’d done and dodged and the damage she’d both inflicted and sustained. She could hear roars, she wondered vaguely what was happening in the castle behind her, but she couldn’t afford to let her concentration waver, not even a minute.</p><p> </p><p>In the end, it didn’t matter. She took a cutting curse to the stomach and dropped like a stone. She could hear people retreating, heard a cold high-pitched voice from very far away, but she was beyond caring, beyond thinking, beyond anything but the burning sensation in her stomach and the cold in her limbs…</p><p> </p><p>She came to, a little later, to a voice frantically casting healing charms and holding her hand, begging, “Demmy please, please wake up, Demmy!” and she realised with a start that it was Ginny, looking battered and bruised and hysterical until she figured that Demelza was awake.</p><p> </p><p>“Gin… Col… where?” she managed, and Ginny looked miserable as she admitted that she didn’t know.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s all right, it’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.” Ginny was holding her hand, stroking her fingers and her hair, and it made her think of her mother, a mother she’d never known. It also made her think of Margaret, and the summer before last...</p><p> </p><p>“But I want to go <em>home</em>, I don’t want to fight anymore,” Demelza ground out, but she wasn’t even sure anymore what she was thinking of. Inexplicably she thought of Colin’s bedroom, and smiled faintly.</p><p> </p><p>“I know,” and it sounded like Ginny was crying but her eyes were dry, “It’s going to be all right.”</p><p> </p><p>Demelza nodded, looking up at Ginny, but she could see Colin out of the corner of her eye, or maybe that was her mind’s eye, or maybe that was a hallucination, and she regretted not having said goodbye after all, but really all she could think of anymore was the burning in her stomach, spreading into her chest cavity and making it so unbelievably hard to breathe-</p><p> </p><p>-And then she fell unconscious for the second time that night, and blissfully, knew no more.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When she came to, again, it was the morning after Battle and her father was at her bedside, white-faced and trembling, holding her hand with his eyes closed.</p><p> </p><p>“Dad…?” she managed, every inch of her in pain, and his eyes flew open.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh my God, Demelza, you’re awake! Heather! Madam Pomfrey!”</p><p> </p><p>They came running up, and the next few minutes were occupied with tearful reunions, and apprising her of the victory, and several nasty potions shoved down her throat, and as the pain became more manageable and her head less woozy she realised the glaring omission by her bed.</p><p> </p><p>“Where’s Colin?” she asked abruptly, a growing horror in her chest. “Where is he? Is he very badly hurt? Is he here or at St. Mungo’s? Where is he?!”</p><p> </p><p>“Demelza…” her father said, heavily, putting a hand on her shoulder even as she reflexively jerked away from him, her eyes widening and her head shaking, <em>no no no I’m not listening no I can’t hear you no no no</em>, “I’m sorry.” His head bowed, and Demelza’s world shattered.</p><p> </p><p>She could hear nothing but a high-pitched whine in her ears, everything was moving in slow motion, her mouth was open, she knew, her throat was hurting, was she screaming? She could hear the sound of her heartbeat, pounding in her ears, growing, blocking out the piercing whine, tears burning the scratches still littering her arms and neck and face and shoulders, and all she could see was Colin, laughing, smiling, lovely Colin, her lifeline, snapped; and she could feel herself becoming hysterical but it hurt to breathe, fingers clawing at her chest because it felt like her rib cage was crushing her heart and she didn’t want to breathe but also she couldn’t stop her traitorous lungs from trying and she could see blurry indistinct images leaning over her, and people talking, and trying to touch her but it burned where they touched and then someone raised a wand and whispered a spell and she was out cold again for the third time in two days.</p><p> </p><p>When she came to, Dennis was sitting by her bedside, and they cried together, silently. Little Dennis Creevey, as she’d always thought of him, looked painfully older than when she’d last seen him. It hurt her, how much he looked like Colin, how when she saw him out of the corner of her eye, she thought it was him and she’d turn her head and see Dennis instead and it felt like losing Colin all over again. She knew she could never really <em>see</em> Dennis again as just Dennis, not without seeing Colin too, and it hurt, it hurt to know she had not only lost the love of her life and her best friend, she was going to lose the only real support system she may have ever had. He was her world, and then he was gone, and she didn’t know how to be Demelza without Colin. She understood her father with a sudden wrenching clarity in a way she never had before, and she wished she could go back to a time before she could relate to him so very clearly. What were the odds, that she’d suffered a similar fate to her father? <em>Them cursed Robins, </em>she thought, and involuntarily grimaced a bitter smile.</p><p> </p><p>She snuck out to the makeshift morgue once Madam Pomfrey let her go, without telling anybody. She needed to see him for herself. He looked peaceful, almost as though he was just asleep, and she felt a terrible urge to shake him awake, but his hands were icy cold and his chest wasn’t moving. He seemed smaller and frailer than she remembered, almost as though in life his personality had made him seem bigger than he really was. A single curl stood up from his head, and she fought the urge to ruffle the rest of it – it wasn’t Colin anymore that she’d be touching, and she’d rather hold memories of him warm and alive in her heart than him as a shell. She couldn’t remember how long she sat there, staring at him, the thoughts swirling through her head too many to separate. She was numb, drained, done. She’d honestly thought this was going to be hardest part, but it wasn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Seeing the Creeveys though, that <em>was</em> the hardest thing she’d ever done, their faces blank and unseeing almost, Margaret looking as though she’d aged ten years in ten minutes. There was no need to express condolences to each other, they knew. She drew level with them, they pulled her into their arms, and they’d all collapsed into tears together. There was no celebration for them, for any of them. She murmured her apologies for failing Colin, for losing him in the thick of the fight, and they forgave her, but she couldn’t forgive herself. She didn’t know if she would ever forgive herself.</p><p> </p><p>She was a ghost, insubstantial, moored only by how much her heart hurt. She stood there listlessly when Professor McGonagall, wan and lined with sorrow in her eyes, quietly broke to the Creeveys exactly how Colin had died. “It was the Avada Kedavra,” she had said, quietly, “painless. He didn’t suffer. And he helped save us all, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey. He was protecting two other fallen students, both of whom survived thanks to his selflessness and bravery. My condolences are not enough to express what a loss Colin spells for Hogwarts, and the Wizarding World as a whole. I am so, so very sorry.”</p><p> </p><p>She felt angry too, at Colin, for dying and she knew it was unfair and tarnishing his memory to think that way; but she couldn’t help it. <em>God fucking damnit, Col, how could you die? And why on earth were you trying to be a hero, trying to protect others – how could you leave me like this?! </em>And then there were moments where she wished she’d died too, so she didn’t have to deal with the agony of being alive in a world where Colin didn’t exist, and she felt so guilty at that too, because Lord knows her father would’ve had to deal with this feeling instead, and she didn’t want to wish this pain upon anybody. And then she felt guilty about being so broken, when Margaret and Will were burying a son and Dennis was burying a brother, and she was just the girlfriend; but she couldn’t bargain herself into feeling less miserable in order to be strong for them. She didn’t, couldn’t be strong for anybody. She couldn’t even be strong for her own self. Will had asked her, quietly, to make a speech at Colin’s funeral, let her know that the Muggle story was going to be that he’d tried to intervene in a mugging gone wrong and had lost his life trying to save two classmates, and she’d almost refused because it seemed like too much, too hard to flagellate herself emotionally over her boyfriend’s body for everyone to see. But then Dennis had taken her hand, and told her that Colin would’ve wanted to hear what she had to say because she really was the one who knew him best, and though it hurt to hear that clear voice just then, with all the inflections and quirks just slightly wrong, it was just something that she then knew she had to do. What was one more unbearable moment in this quagmire of suffering, anyway?</p><p> </p><p>Ginny came and found her, the next day, sitting blankly under a tree staring out on to the lake. Guilt suffused her cheeks when she saw her, remembering that Fred had died too, and she hadn’t so much as sought her out to give her condolences. Not to mention that Colin had really been Ginny’s friend before hers, they’d all been close, Ginny was hurting too.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry, Ginny,” she said, before she got too choked up to continue, but Ginny stopped her, falling to the ground next to her, “I’m sorry too, Demmy,” she whispered, “so sorry.” They sat there for a while, in silence, neither of them pushing the other to talk, until Harry came out to look for Ginny and Demelza motioned to her to go, turning away so she didn’t have to see the two of them be couple-y – she couldn’t bear the sight of a happy couple just then.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The next day was Colin’s funeral; the day she had been dreading, and when she woke in the morning, alone in her dorm, after another night of tossing and turning and crying and barely sleeping; she almost didn’t go. She didn’t have a speech written or planned, didn’t know how the hell to put the turmoil in her stomach into words, and she didn’t think that hurling abuse at her boyfriend for dying at his <em>funeral</em> of all places was the right way to go about things.</p><p> </p><p>Heather had dropped off some clothes for her before they’d left the day before, letting her stay at Hogwarts with the rest of the mourners until the funerals were over, but she figured she would go back to her father’s after Colin’s – the only one she really wanted (if one could use that word for a funeral) to attend anyway, other than Fred’s (for Ginny’s sake) and the memorial service for all the deceased that would probably happen at the end of the week. The thought of being at Hogwarts was weighing on her, making her anxiety spike. There were just too many memories in this place. She got dressed mechanically, in a simple black dress and shoes, contemplating tying her hair in her signature tight plait before remembering, with a sudden stab, how much Colin liked her hair down and wild. But there was no more Colin to play with the curls, no more Colin to fiddle with the hair-tie. She’d grown up with silence all around her but now the lack of sound was louder than anything she’d ever heard, and it was driving her so mad that she’d taken to talking out loud to herself in a feeble attempt to fill the deafening quiet.</p><p> </p><p>She left the hair down; and went to the Great Hall to take the Portkey along with any other castle residents who wanted to go. She was expecting just Ginny, and perhaps Harry, but many other DA members were there, all of them coming up to her to murmur condolences and give her hugs. Ginny squeezed her hand, her own eyes swollen. Her anxiety spiked even more, and she could hear some shallow panting breaths from somewhere. She realised, with a start, that it was her, when Anthony Goldstein of all people took both her hands in his and drew her to the side, putting an arm around her shoulders and coached her breathing into slowing down. His eyes were shadowed, and she realised it must’ve been weighing on him too, a little bit. Colin wasn’t easy to forget.</p><p> </p><p>They Portkeyed to the grounds, and after meeting her father and Heather briefly, Demelza went up, ahead, to sit with the Creeveys. Margaret was sobbing openly into Will’s chest, while a steady stream of tears dripped down his cheeks into her hair. Dennis was gripping the hand of a Gryffindor girl she’d seen him hanging around in his third year, a slight figure with mousy brown hair, Muggleborn, who had apparently been in hiding through the same resistance network that had hidden the Creeveys when Dennis and Colin had opted to sneak back into Hogwarts for their fourth and sixth years, respectively; shoulders shaking, face wet and shiny. She looked at the casket, closed, so the sight of his unmarked body wouldn’t raise any eyebrows amongst the Muggles, and willed the tears to come and moisten her throbbing, dry eyes, but they wouldn’t. She wondered if she’d ever cry again, but then she saw the picture of Colin they’d selected for display, one that she herself had taken that damnably perfect summer, and suddenly the tears wouldn’t stop.</p><p> </p><p>She tried to pay attention to the speeches that came before hers, but it was too hard, especially the one delivered by Dennis which focused on their childhood and the first few years at Hogwarts. The idea of a baby Colin was too hard to think about, knowing that that child had grown up to die before he was barely a man. She wondered if it was always going to hurt this much, this strongly. She vaguely heard herself being introduced as Colin’s girlfriend and started to get up, no notes or speech in mind. The walk to the front seemed so far away.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m not sure where to begin, how to explain what Colin meant to me, and I think anything I say couldn’t possibly do him justice. I met him at age twelve on the way to boarding school, and at the end of that first train ride together I already knew he was special. I’d grown up an only child with a busy father in a small village, and I was always quiet. Colin, as you all know, was the very antithesis of silence. We were the unlikeliest of friends – but we were the best of friends. I didn’t know I could talk, and open up, and share before I met him – and the most talkative boy I’d ever known surprised me by being the best listener I’d ever met. Colin was kind, and thoughtful, and caring, with the eye of an artist and the heart of a hero – I always thought, hey, he’d make some person very lucky someday. I just never thought I could be lucky enough to have that person be me,” and at this her voice broke, and she had to clear her throat to continue, swiping at her eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“The first time Col kissed me, he ended up telling me the films his mum was so fond of knew what they were talking about after all. He was right, because we had a fairy tale relationship from that moment on. And Colin really was a Prince Charming where it counted – he may never have been very great at the flattery bits, but he always stood up for what was right. He went into that encounter knowing there was a good chance he was going to end up injured or worse… but he did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. And while it kills me to know that I’m going to have to live in a world that doesn’t have him in it, I also know that I am an immeasurably better person for having had him in my life for as long as I have. A hundred years wouldn’t have been enough for me to not feel bereft at his loss, but a single moment with him was enough to have changed my life. I love you, Colin; thank you for giving me the gift of you for as long as you did.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Life went on but it also stood still. Demelza refused to attend a single victory party – the very idea of one sickened her to her stomach. She went for a few more funerals (more than she’d planned on, though after the show of support at Colin’s she figured it was only right to attend those for the other fallen DA members – it couldn’t hurt as bad as that one did, anyway), including Fred’s, and cracked her first smile in a week when she saw the fireworks that George had set off afterwards to give his brother a proper send-off. She couldn’t imagine what George was going through. But then, the fireworks made her think of Colin even though she really didn’t want them to – the problem was that <em>everything </em>made her think of Colin - because they reminded her of when the Weasley Twins had made their great escape in her third year, and Colin had been so excited he’d been bouncing clear off his feet to see them.</p><p> </p><p>She threw herself into flying, because at least when she was in the air, she could trick herself into believing Colin was sitting there, on the field, watching her go. She tried to throw herself into studying, because she was going to have to take her OWLs eventually, and mundane things were somewhat of a distraction. She threw herself into babysitting Paul, because again, here was something she could do that didn’t make her think of Colin over and over. And she spoke to her father, more openly, more candidly than she had her whole life, about Ministry life during the war and silent resistance, and about her mother.</p><p> </p><p>He told her about grief, and about how unfair it would feel to watch people move on with their lives while you suffered inside, but how time would eventually heal all wounds. How being happy in the future wasn’t wrong, but how feeling however she was feeling at the moment was all right, too. He apologised to her, for not having been able to sort himself out in her childhood, told her he would support her no matter what, and held her when she cried about not being able to look at Dennis without seeing Colin, and therefore having lost the both of them in one fell swoop.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She took her OWLs in June, along with the rest of her class, shunning any attempt at conversation; and kept to herself mostly during the summer. She met Ginny occasionally, and Dennis, and suggested to Ginny that George and Dennis might benefit from talking to each other – they’d both lost a brother and Colin might as well as have been Dennis’s twin. She asked Ginny how she was holding up and faring, how her parents were doing, what her plans were moving forward, but wouldn’t give more than one-word answers when pushed about Colin. Meeting Dennis was always painful for both of them, it was too raw, and they did it less and less as the summer went on.</p><p> </p><p>She got her OWL results back, a month after she gave them, and the collection of mostly Es (perhaps some of those were pity Es? She really didn’t think she’d done well enough to deserve any Es, but at least she didn’t fail any of her subjects) helped her cement a decision she’d been mulling over all summer. She spoke to her father, and then she wrote to Headmistress McGonagall and requested a meeting, and then she did some more writing after that meeting, and then she received a letter that she’d been waiting on and realised there were two conversations she really needed to have.</p><p> </p><p>The first was Dennis, who was extremely understanding. He gave her a hug, wished her best of luck, and told her to take care of herself. He also tried to give her Colin’s camera and pictures, but she told him to keep them. She didn’t want any reminders.</p><p> </p><p>The second was Ginny, which didn’t go well at all.</p><p> </p><p>“I need you to know… I’ve decided I’m not going back to Hogwarts for my sixth and seventh years. I requested a transfer to Ilvermorny and it’s been accepted. So… I leave in a month.”</p><p> </p><p>“You what?!” Ginny exclaimed, startled. “You can’t just… you can’t just <em>leave, </em>Demelza!”</p><p> </p><p>“Why not, Ginny? I can’t go back in there. I don’t ever want to go back in there. He’s literally everywhere in there for me, and I can’t take it. I won’t be able to take it!”</p><p> </p><p>“Demmy you can’t just run away, Colin wouldn’t have wanted that-“</p><p> </p><p>“I DON’T GIVE A <em>FUCK </em>ABOUT WHAT COLIN WOULD’VE WANTED!” she screamed, and it’s as if a dam had burst. “HE LEFT ME GINNY, AND ALL I CAN FUCKING THINK ABOUT IS HIM!” She was sobbing now, great big hiccoughing cries, in a way she hadn’t done except for at night when she was all alone.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t eat because all I can think about is mealtimes with him. I can’t sleep because all I can think about is sneaking around his house or Hogwarts to sleep with him. I can’t fucking breathe because every time I do I keep thinking of how he can’t do that anymore. My birthday is coming up and I’m dreading the reality of a world where I’m older than him, where I keep getting older than him! I spent every minute of my life for the last five years with him, either physically or mentally, and as unhealthy as that sounds, I don’t know how to be Demelza without him! I just can’t. I think about home and I only think about him because <em>he</em> was my home, not my actual house or Hogwarts. I close my eyes and I picture the moment I got the news. I’m literally haunted in my sleep by images of what he looked like when I saw him. I feel so guilty because he was only at Hogwarts because of me! He didn’t want to leave me Ginny, and they both wanted to try to fight with the DA, and so I asked my father to make Colin and Dennis forged Blood Status certificates and we put the Creeveys into hiding through Justin’s resistance network. I got him what he needed to be there that night and then he died and I can’t help but think that it’s because of me. If I would’ve just refused – if he’d just gone into hiding with his parents, he would’ve been alive, but I was selfish, I wanted him with me at Hogwarts, and so I made it happen. I can’t go back to that place and go for fucking class and do my assignments, Ginny. I can’t fly over the spot where he died and play a fucking Quidditch game. I just can’t do it. At least at Ilvermorny I’ll still graduate, and get a job there, I guess. I can’t… Britain doesn’t have anything for me anymore, at least not now.”</p><p> </p><p>Her sobs had grown steadily quieter as she went on, and at the end of it she felt… cleansed, despite the fact that her face was blotchy and eyes swollen and she had a headache building in her temples.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny looked at her, and while her eyes were watery and shimmery with tears, her voice was firm and steady when she spoke. “It is not your fault that Colin passed away, and while I know that it’s hard to accept that, I hope someday you will. What the two of you had was special, we all saw it. I’m going to miss you Demmy, but I hope that Ilvermorny gives you peace. Keep in touch – maybe not now, but when it doesn’t hurt so much to think of us here.” And the two witches leaned forward and hugged, and Demelza let herself sag in relief at having gotten through the conversation.</p><p> </p><p>Next step: Ilvermorny.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Au revoir, Colin.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm sorry, guys :( Chapter 4 is a bit less depressing, though. It does end on a happy-ish note.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Elsa</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Last chapter! I think what I really wanted to highlight here was that there is life beyond loss, that time does heal all wounds and that you can move on and be happy even if you lose someone you really loved, you might always miss them but that doesn't stop you from living a full life. Life's too long. </p><p>The Ilvermorny information came from Pottermore and the HP Lexicon. I tried to incorporate little Easter Eggs wherever I could.</p><p>If you made it till the end, I would appreciate if you leave a review :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Moving to a new country was… strange. She had requested Headmaster Fontaine to not reveal to her new classmates that she had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, not wanting to be inundated with questions. An infrequent student exchange programme had existed between Ilvermorny and other schools: notably Beauxbatons, but also a few students from Castelobruxo and apparently Hogwarts (though that was before Demelza’s time); so, the arrival of a new student wouldn’t – shouldn’t – raise any eyebrows.</p><p> </p><p>She had the choice between Wampus and Thunderbird for a House, having been selected by both, and picked Thunderbird because she never wanted to be a warrior, ever again. Besides, she liked flying, and especially after everything, being in the air was the only thing that made sense, so she figured her spirit animal was probably a bird or something, even though that wasn’t how it worked, she knew, but Thunderbird <em>felt</em> right regardless. She joined the Quidditch team, the best Chaser of the lot there, topped the class during DADA (though she was middling of the pack at best in her other classes), had a pleasant enough acquaintanceship with her dormmates and classmates, and spent the first six weeks at Ilvermorny having nightmares every night until she finally broke down and went to the Healer on Duty, Healer Stone, and asked him for something to help her sleep. He put her on a carefully regimented dosage of Dreamless Sleep and also suggested a Mind Healer, which she refused.</p><p> </p><p>The first time she laughed <em>after </em>took her by surprise. It was a small thing, three months after she got there, just a silly joke made by a fellow Thunderbird, Joel Tanner. A snort of laughter left her mouth and she was instantly thrown back to Colin, who would always make jokes like that, and a thought in her mind going ‘you don’t deserve to laugh when he can’t do that anymore’ made the laugh die on her lips and suddenly she was leaving the dining hall as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, blindly heading for the Snakewood tree on the grounds. She liked the tree. It was peaceful under that canopy of leaves, it calmed her mind now that Colin was no longer there to do that for her. Her heart ached even more at that thought. She needed him.</p><p> </p><p>She was so intent on getting to the tree, to collapsing under its comforting arms, she didn’t notice Joel getting up to follow her. He approached her, slowly, putting a tanned brown hand on her pale forearm as she cried, silently, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping the noise down.</p><p> </p><p>“Are you okay, Demelza?” he asked concernedly, “I didn’t say anything to offend you, did I?”</p><p> </p><p>She started, not realising someone was there.</p><p> </p><p>“No, no; it’s fine Joel, I’m sorry. Nothing to do with you. I just… miss home.” She said, weakly trying to smile.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want, but if you want to talk about it… it might help. Share your sorrows and all that.”</p><p> </p><p>And suddenly, she found herself speaking, desperate for anything that could help ease the crushing sensation in her chest. “You know about the war back in Britain, right? I’m sure you must’ve heard… well, I – my boyfriend died. During the final battle. I was there. I couldn’t do anything.” It was abrupt, and it was designed to shock.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh man, I’m really sorry, Demelza, I don’t know what to say.” He looked horrified and taken aback, and she had never felt the divide between herself and an ordinary teenager more acutely than in that moment. “But… if you want to talk about it anyway, I can listen.”</p><p> </p><p>Surprisingly enough, she did. She spoke about Colin, and how he’d been her best friend and then her boyfriend, how she’d been so sure they were going to get married and how she didn’t know how to handle herself after he was gone. Joel introduced her to his girlfriend Amanda the next day, and Amanda was great friends with Talia Andrews, who was actually a roommate of Demelza’s, and suddenly Demelza had friends.</p><p> </p><p>Joel and Amanda were the ones who pushed her into considering the Mind Healer again. She resisted the idea initially, but after a particularly bad week, gave in. How bad could it be?</p><p> </p><p>As it transpired, very bad indeed. The Mind Healer, a warm young woman by the name of Healer Smith – Bethany - was very pleasant indeed, but actually putting Colin into words to someone who didn’t know him was… incredibly difficult. Bethany was a great listener – part of the job description, she supposed – but Demelza wasn’t a great talker, so progress was uphill, especially since at first, she didn’t want to acknowledge her trauma. She just wanted sleep, and she didn’t want to hurt anymore, but not at the expense of forgetting Colin.</p><p> </p><p>After a few weeks of stalling though, she figured she had to try to open up, and someone who was magically bound to not talk about her shit to other people was probably the best one. Joel, Amanda and Talia were great, but they didn’t, <em>couldn’t </em>understand. So, slowly, haltingly, she tried, and learned there were words and terms to describe what she was feeling, like PTSD and survivor’s guilt. Bethany also suggested that she keep a journal, and Demelza agreed on the condition that once her head was on straight, she was tossing that thing into a fire.</p><p> </p><p>Writing out her feelings was a whole different type of hell. She always addressed them as letters to Colin, because, as damaging as it probably was for her emotional health, she’d always found it easier to open up to him than to her own self. But engaging with those feelings was like picking at an injury that had just began to scab over and making it raw and red again. She felt like one giant gaping weeping wound, and probably had most of the people around her terrified for her mental health that first year – often prone to panic attacks, lack of sleep, nightmares, and days of utter hopelessness and fits of crying. The news that she’d lost her boyfriend in the 1998 battle made its rounds around the school, but luckily her friends ensured the fact that she’d fought in the battle didn’t, and so people mostly left her alone; and her three friends learned to ask her what she needed to feel supported and banded together to give that to her, and finally Demelza began feeling a bit more at home, despite the giant Colin-sized hole in her heart.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>In her last year at Ilvermorny she was scouted by the Finchburg Finches, a Massachusetts team, and joined them as a Chaser reserve upon graduating, and realised with a sort of bittersweet smile that she’d actually achieved that faraway dream she’d had, of being a Quidditch player, even though her other half hadn’t had the chance to become a famous photographer. She still thought of Colin as her other half, despite having had two short ill-fated relationships in her Ilvermorny career, one with a Brazilian exchange student named Eduardo which had lasted three months and one with a New Yorker called Ian who was two years her junior (though as she’d only gone on four dates with Ian, total, calling it a relationship was generous in the extreme).</p><p> </p><p>At least she could think of Colin and smile, albeit wistfully, instead of feeling like she’d stabbed herself in the throat.</p><p> </p><p>She kept in infrequent touch with Ginny over the years, and in even more infrequent touch with Dennis. She felt like an awful person, she had been close to Dennis too, but it was just too hard. He was just too similar to Colin. Ginny had joined the Holyhead Harpies as a Chaser reserve as well, so they had a bit more to talk about that wasn’t emotionally charged, but they were both getting busier and more distant as time went on. It was just the way things went, Demelza supposed. The only person she really corresponded with from back home, excepting her family, was Luna Lovegood of all people. She’d met Luna again in her first year at the Finches – she’d joined a Magizoology expedition led by Newt Scamander, and they’d been hot on the trail of some creature or the other in Peru while she’d been playing an exhibition match at a small stadium outside Lima. They’d run into each other at a small pisco bar where the teams were doing a post-match celebration and the Magizoologists were apparently unwinding after a long day. Luna was an interesting combination of blunt and whimsical, and she had a refreshing perspective on things. She’d helped her deal with Colin’s death in ways even her Mind Healer couldn’t. She received an invite for Ginny’s wedding to Harry a couple years into her Finches career but didn’t attend. She wasn’t ready to go see the Hogwarts lot again, her trips back home thus far had been limited to her childhood home only and she’d been careful not to let anyone know that she’d been back in the country.</p><p> </p><p>That first year with the Finches was… good for her. The increased exercise load helped, the sheer physicality of her job keeping her too exhausted to be sleep-deprived and the endorphins keeping her from being too sad. She still hadn’t kicked the habit of talking out loud to Colin occasionally, though she was careful not to do it in front of other people. She also still wrote Colin letters, though over time they moved from miserable to resigned to just… newsy. She still signed them ‘I love you’, because that hadn’t changed, and she wasn’t going to stop until she found someone else to love, which she was fairly sure was never going to happen. She also started hooking up with the team Keeper, a bloke named Thomas Henderson, who was big and burly and looked absolutely nothing like Colin but still, had a nice smile and made her laugh and was totally fine with the fact that she wasn’t emotionally invested (and had no plans of changing that, either). Talia squealed when she’d heard – she was a huge fan of Henderson and his biceps. She stayed a reserve for three years, occasionally playing more and more matches as a starting chaser in exhibition matches and the like, and three years in made the starting line-up, one of the proudest moments of her life. Best of all, the only Colin related sad thought she had surrounding her promotion was <em>I wish he was here to see this</em>, and zero actual tears, and Demelza thought she might actually be able to somehow manage the next fifty-odd years without Colin now.</p><p> </p><p>The thing with Thomas was still going on, they’d fallen into a relationship, she supposed, and he asked her at some point if she had ever thought about going back to Britain, seeing if she could get traded onto a team there. Her lightning quick sharp refusal surprised even her – she thought she was doing better, but apparently not enough. He seemed taken aback, and that’s when she realised Thomas had no idea about the Battle and Colin and any of that stuff – she’d been so used to having her friends know she’d forgotten people outside of the Ilvermorny circuit definitely didn’t. So she told him she had some really bad memories of Britain, touched on the whole disaster of 1998 bit, and told him moving to Britain was out of the question. That’s when he revealed he was being traded to the Ballycastle Bats and was leaving the US, and she realised that she didn’t feel anything at the thought of losing him. They broke up then, no hard feelings, and remained in indifferent contact for a few years after. She was not moving back to Britain, and definitely not for a boy.</p><p> </p><p>Although, it transpired that she eventually would move back to Britain, but for a girl instead.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>A year after the Thomas split, she met David, at her Mind Healer’s clinic of all places. She bumped into him on the way out and they got to talking briefly, and then kept talking when he asked her to get a coffee with him at the hospital cafeteria. He was a newly qualified Healer at the same hospital, doing a specialisation in Spell-Damage, a few years older than her, with straight mousy brown hair and hazel eyes and a smile that was as full and bright as Colin’s had been, and they became casual friends. He also had a wedding band on his finger, so she assumed he was married, but a few months of intermittent conversation later she discovered he had been but no longer was, and that’s when it felt so easy, so natural to talk about Colin. Here was someone who <em>understood</em>.</p><p> </p><p>She told him about Colin, about what it was like to lose your childhood sweetheart and best friend to an unnatural death, how she’d literally run away to another continent to get away from the memories of him because she’d defined herself as <em>Colin-and-Demelza</em> for so long. He told her about Jeannie, how they’d met at a café when he’d been in his first year of training and she had been pursuing a law certification at MACUSA. They’d been casual friends for a couple years, dated for one, married for another, and then she’d caught Dragon Pox and died. They spoke about living on <em>after</em>, how guilty they felt when they were angry at the others who moved on while their lives just <em>ended</em>, how memories of loves lost made life unbearable but to not have those memories would be even worse. There was no need to pretend, no need to hide. He was good for her, calming her through camaraderie where Colin had done so with chatter – two routes to the very same destination. And when one night David leaned over and pressed his lips to hers, she felt a spark she hadn’t felt in years. There was nothing like kissing someone who made the noise in her head quieten, nothing like kissing someone who understood.</p><p> </p><p>They started dating soon after, and though Demelza still felt guilty every time she referred to David as her boyfriend, she wasn’t guilty enough to stop. She knew, objectively, that there was nothing wrong in moving on, that Colin was too generous a person to deprive <em>her</em> of all people of companionship and light and laughter, but she felt guilty anyway; no matter what Joel and Amanda (now a few years into Mind Healer training herself) told her. But David was sweet, and battling some of the same struggles, so her skittishness and back-and-forth didn’t put him off the way it might’ve done with someone else without that shared experience. After all, it had taken him three months after kissing her that first time to take his wedding ring off.</p><p> </p><p>That didn’t stop her from having a panic attack the first time he told her he loved her. But when he sat there, soothing her, helping her count her breaths and ground herself with things she could see and smell and touch; that’s when she realised maybe she could love someone else too. That perhaps Colin didn’t need to be the only one.</p><p> </p><p>She still wrote him letters, but they were few and far apart now.</p><p> </p><p>The last letter she wrote Colin was a few years into her relationship with David, when her live-in boyfriend got down on one knee while she was cooking pasta on a Tuesday in her pyjamas, marinara sauce smeared on one cheek, and asked her if she wanted to go by Robins-Miller instead of just Robins from now on, a simple solitaire ring in hand, three days before they were scheduled to make a trip back to England to meet Demelza’s family. She laughingly said yes, and they celebrated the night long, but in the morning David had an early shift and Demelza had the day off from practice, and so, without planning or thinking or even feeling sad about it she wrote her final letter to Colin. She told him about David’s proposal, about how strange it felt even ten years later to have this realisation that she was going to spend the rest of her life with a man who wasn’t Colin, asked him if he was proud of her, told him she was finally going to let him rest, and closed by saying she would always love Colin, he would always be in her heart, but that she’d finally discovered her heart was big enough to love more than just one person. And she signed that letter goodbye, and it felt final.</p><p> </p><p>She fetched all the letters she’d written, pages upon pages of them, all together they made a book. She tied them with ribbon, shrunk them down, and put them in the bag she was taking with her on her trip to England, and on her last day there, before they were scheduled to return, she squeezed David’s hand and told him she was going to go pay a visit, and after a searching look into her eyes, he squeezed back, kissed her on the forehead and told her to take her time.</p><p> </p><p>That was the first day she’d been back at his grave since the funeral, and she was unprepared for how much it made her hurt, an echo of the pain the way it had been in the early days, not dulled in the way she’d carried around every single day since. She said her goodbyes, eyes streaming, pressing her lips to her hand and touching the headstone, and left the letters there, charmed to be unnoticeable to others, tied together with a rose.</p><p> </p><p>They Portkeyed back to Boston, where they now lived, and promptly eloped the next day. She sent letters to her family and Luna and Ginny to let them know; and threw a party for her teammates and Ilvermorny friends and David’s colleagues and friends the following weekend – and endured many rounds of ribbing since no one actually knew David had popped the question. And she was happy, really truly happy after a really long time. So happy in fact, that when their friends left, they decided to have a private celebration of their own, and because her life was just a collection of cliches, a month later Demelza realised she was pregnant.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She officially retired from playing, offering to stay on as a mentor/coach/scout until she got too big to fly. Ginny had gone back to playing after birthing her first child, only retiring after the second, but Demelza didn’t think she would, that itch had been scratched for her and she was looking forward to doing something else. Being pregnant wasn’t as bad as she had feared – she was anxious, given the fact that her own mother had passed bringing her into the world, but her pregnancy was textbook. David hovered, naturally, but she wasn’t afraid of death the way she had been as a teenager, though she obviously wasn’t going to go out there looking for danger. She had dreams of Britain though, the whole time she was pregnant, and when she was six months along she had the most vivid dream she’d ever had of a daughter who looked like her with David’s beautiful hazel-green eyes, laughing and flying over the pitch at Hogwarts, and she asked David if he would ever consider moving to Britain.</p><p> </p><p>And he shrugged, and he said, “why not?” They could always move back, or even move further east eventually (perhaps to New Zealand or someplace) – after thirty years in one country he was ready to experience a new one. Besides, portkeys and apparition still existed. And so David applied for a position at St. Mungo’s, to begin a year later, figuring this would give them six months after the birth of their child to have to contend with a move. She wrote Ginny and Luna and her father to let them know; and nestled in Ginny’s reply was a throwaway sentence about Dennis, now an Auror, getting married and George being a groomsman, so she decided to reach out to Dennis as well. She wrote to him, congratulating him on his wedding, letting him know that she was pregnant and moving back to England. His reply was equally warm and filled with congratulations, but they felt like strangers now to each other, and while it felt like the end of an era and it hurt her a little, dissolving this last real link to Colin, Demelza realised she was actually pretty… okay. It was fine.</p><p> </p><p>In January, her daughter was born, a daughter with inky black hair like hers, and hazel eyes like David’s. She wasn’t sure if they were going to go with the half-formed idea in her head, but when she saw David’s eyes, shining with tears of joy and a little sorrow, she put the idea to him, and he agreed. And so, Elsa Jeannie Robins-Miller came into this world as a very late Christmas present for her parents.</p><p> </p><p>They moved back to England, to a small cottage in the country but in the midst of a village instead of on the fringes, and Demelza opened a Flying School for young children once Elsa was old enough to be left with her grandparents for a few hours. Ginny’s children came by for lessons, as did Luna’s, and so did the kids of some of her Hogwarts classmates; and her heart was full. And when Elsa got her Hogwarts letter and she went to Diagon Alley with her to get her supplies, it didn’t hurt, didn’t throw her into memories of her own schooldays. She helped Elsa pick out and name her owl (Artemis), stopped her from buying too many Skiving Snackboxes, whooped and cheered when she took out three windows in Ollivander’s shop with a single wave of her wand and then put them back to rights with a startled second wave; and put her on the Express with only a small ache in her heart at being parted from her daughter for the very first time.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The years went on much as they had, but the domesticity was comforting. After the first time it usually became David’s job to do the Kings Cross run – most parents with young children preferred to leave them under her care when they went to the station to pick up or drop off their older kids, and so her classes were usually in full swing at that time. It was in Elsa’s fifth year that she got a letter from her daughter asking her to please come to the station. <em>Dear Mum</em>, it began, and went on to tell her that she wanted to introduce her parents to her fourth-year boyfriend, the first one serious enough to warrant a meet-the-parents. She was invited over to his place for dinner that night, but she wanted them to meet him first, before inviting him over the next night to theirs, and then perhaps doing a dinner with both sets of parents at some point that summer.</p><p> </p><p>So Demelza let all her parents know that this year they were going to have to make other arrangements, and set off to Kings Cross with David, who looked a bit spellshocked at the idea of his baby girl being old enough to be in a serious relationship. She was waiting at the platform as the scarlet engine rolled in, and beamed as she saw her pretty, petite daughter, hair pulled back into a messy ponytail held in place with her Ravenclaw tie, coming towards her, and then her eyes fell on the thin figure to her left, and her world spun on its axis.</p><p> </p><p>There were those blonde curls she couldn’t forget if her life depended on it, and a bright smile she knew almost as well as she knew her own. She could hear his voice almost before she heard the boy speak, and she was clutching David’s hand in a death grip so hard he looked at her, alarmed, before schooling his face into a smile as their daughter approached, grinning ear to ear.</p><p> </p><p>“Mum, dad, this is Colin Creevey, my boyfriend. Colin, these are my parents, David and Demelza.” “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Robins-Miller,” he said, and his voice was exactly what she imagined it would be. She felt David start in realisation next to her; and squeezed his hand in warning before opening her mouth to speak. “It’s nice to meet you too, Colin,” she said, her voice hoarse to her own ears, “Call me Demelza.” And she could hear David next to her making his own introductions, but her head was whirling so fast it was a wonder it was still attached to her shoulders. Screw being hit by a Bludger - she felt as though she was being used <em>as </em>a Bludger during Quidditch training. If she squinted it was like a snapshot in her own past, seeing her daughter holding the hand of a boy wearing her dead late boyfriend’s face.</p><p> </p><p>Elsa and Colin were still talking, and David, bless him, had taken over the conversation to give her a chance to pull herself together. She had never been so eager for a Firewhiskey in her entire life. Then she heard footsteps coming up to them, and she <em>knew</em> who she was going to see before she even looked up. She tuned back in to hear Colin say, “oh and here are my parents – mum, dad, this is Elsa, my girlfriend, and her parents-“ and then there was Dennis, his voice a bit deeper than she remembered, but with the same inflections and quirks, still as clear as ever, eyes wide open with shock, cutting off his son to exclaim, “Demmy?!”</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Dennis,” she said, laughing with more than a little disbelief, and suddenly he was hugging her fiercely, and laughing too. They pulled apart, still smiling, and looked over at their respective kids, who looked utterly confused. Dennis too looked as though he’d been hit with a Confundus charm when he realised his son was dating Demelza’s daughter, but he seemed to realise that Platform 9¾ was not the place for such revelations. They quickly made the introductions: Dennis was standing next to a sweet blonde and blue-eyed woman, Leslie; and Demelza embraced her as well, and then Dennis and David shook hands; and then Dennis invited the two of them for dinner along with Elsa. They walked out to where the Creeveys had parked their car, it transpired that Dennis lived just a couple hours out of London. She had a whispered conversation with David on their way out, and it seemed Dennis was doing the same with Leslie; because when they got to the car Dennis brought the kids up to speed quickly, saying, “Demmy and I grew up together, kids, but she went to Ilvermorny for her NEWTs and we lost touch over the years. So your mum is going to drive you two and David back to ours, and I’ll side-Apparate Demmy since six of us can’t fit anyway, and it’ll give us two a chance to catch up and get the nostalgia bits out of the way before you all get back and we can have dinner together. What say?”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“It is <em>so</em> good to see you, Demmy,” said Dennis, as they sat in the little garden behind the Creeveys’ cute cottage, beers in hand. “How have you been? What have you been up to?”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah, it’s so great to see you too, Dennis,” she replied, and found that she really, genuinely meant it. “I’m sorry – I should’ve kept in touch better. I was a basket case for a while there, it was easier to stay away, you know? But I’ve been good – retired from American Quidditch when I got pregnant with Elsa and been running a Flying School for little kids ever since. What about you – Ginny told me years ago you became an Auror and I couldn’t believe it – little Dennis Creevey, an Auror! Let’s hear it, then.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes,” he said, chuckling, “Little Dennis Creevey grew up to be an Auror. It’s funny really – that’s where I met Leslie, she’s an Auror too. I don’t know if you remember her from Hogwarts, she was a couple years behind me and in Ravenclaw, so you probably wouldn’t. But yeah, Auror office, I don’t know – after the Battle, it just became the only thing that made sense. Being too young to fight then – I just felt powerless, I guess, didn’t want to feel like that anymore. Mum and dad weren’t best pleased to say the least – but they understood eventually. And I was on the team that collared Dolohov,” and here his face hardened as he mentioned the name of his brother’s killer, “which honestly made it all worth it. But also, Demmy, I need to say this – don’t apologise for not staying in touch. To be honest, I think it was the right thing for both of us. It was too hard. I couldn’t see you without seeing Colin for the longest time and I think it was the same for you, wasn’t it? And I’m not blameless either – so if you persist in saying you’re sorry, I’m going to have to do the same. I’m sorry, Demmy. And hey, I guess we have our kids to thank for getting us back in touch, don’t we? How are you doing with this, by the way?”</p><p> </p><p>“God, Dennis, I’m not going to lie, that was an out-of-body experience for me, seeing your Colin for the first time. I can’t exactly blame Elsa for not giving me a warning seeing as she didn’t know that I’d need one, but it was <em>surreal.</em>”</p><p> </p><p>“Total Twilight Zone, I agree,” he said, clarifying, “It’s a Muggle thing,” upon seeing the puzzlement on her face. “Elsa looks so much like you did as a teenager, Demmy, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw her as well!”</p><p> </p><p>There’s a comfortable silence as the two old friends sit together, shoulder to shoulder, and the missing link between them feels less painful than it has in years. “I miss him,” she says softly, wistfully, “I still do, though it doesn’t hurt the way it used to. I’m happy in my life though, Dennis, and sometimes it feels unfair to say that. But I know he wouldn’t have wanted anything else for me, and if I hadn’t taken a chance on David, I wouldn’t have Elsa, would I?”</p><p> </p><p>“I think he’d have been happy Demmy, and so proud to see where you’ve come. I miss him too, I’ll always miss him, but we’ll see each other again someday, all three of us. Now, let’s go get a head start on the chicken – I think Leslie’ll appreciate not having to cook when she gets home with the kids, you won’t believe the appetite on Colin. I swear, kids these days… we never drove mum and dad spare the way he does with the eating, I’m sure of it.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>They have a lovely dinner together, passing around the roasted chickens that Dennis and Demelza put together along with the oven veg, and Leslie produced a cherry pie a la mode she apparently had made in the morning. Demelza spends the first half of the conversation trying to find the similarities between this Colin and her Colin, but slowly realises they’re not that similar after all, other than freakishly so in appearance. That thought comforts her a bit. Colin’s his own person, just like Col was. She never wants to make the mistake her own father had made with her, unable to look past the face of a woman he had loved and lost to the girl within.</p><p> </p><p>They do dinner, and then dessert, and then coffee, since Leslie was apparently an espresso fiend, and then say their goodbyes, with plans to do this again the next day at the Robins-Millers’, and Floo home, the three of them.</p><p> </p><p>They land in their living room, and Elsa turns her hazel eyes on her mother and asks, “what was that?” and Demelza realises it’s time for a long overdue conversation. David says his goodnights, and backs out of the room quietly, and Demelza sits her daughter down and waits for her to ask her questions.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s going on, mum? I saw your expression when you saw Colin, you looked like you’d seen a ghost – though I guess if you knew his dad, you probably knew his uncle as well right? He told me he was named after an uncle who died during the War – is that why the face? You didn’t date Colin’s dad, right mum? Oh, please tell me you didn’t date his dad, that’s going to be super weird.” Elsa finishes with a half revolted expression on her face.</p><p> </p><p>Demelza can’t help it – she laughs. “Don’t worry, I most definitely never dated Dennis. He was like a little brother to me. But, as you may have guessed, I was… very close to his brother, Colin – I’m going to call him Col to distinguish him from your Colin else this conversation is going to get messy to understand – and seeing Colin was honestly like seeing a ghost. He looks very much like his uncle used to at his age.” A flash of pain crossed her face. It was never going to be easy to think of Col as a teenager, even after all these years.</p><p> </p><p>“I dated Col for a very long time in school, and we were best friends almost from the moment I got to Hogwarts. It was quite a serious relationship, Elsa, my first serious relationship, we were planning on getting married. We fought during the Final Battle, though we were both underage, and that was where he lost his life. I’m not going to pretend and say it wasn’t difficult, because it was. You know I met your dad in the US, I was there because I’d finished my schooling – my NEWTs – at Ilvermorny, mostly to get away from Hogwarts, and I stayed on in America to play for the Finches. I’d loved Col very much, and it was very hard for a few years, and Dennis and I lost touch during our individual grieving processes. Your dad and I, though – I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m not happy with my life now, and with him, Elsa. You know your dad was widowed before we met, it was easier for him to talk about Jeannie than it was for me to talk about Col, which is why you never heard me talk about him beyond a vague mention of ‘losing close friends and a boyfriend during the Battle’. But, I can answer whatever questions you have if you want.”</p><p> </p><p>The very first question Elsa asks her is if she’s okay with her dating Colin. Demelza looks at her appraisingly, and asks, “If I said I wasn’t, would that change anything?” the answering flush is enough response, and she raises a hand before Elsa can speak. “For the record, I’m absolutely fine with it, Elsa, as long as the two of you are okay with the enormous coincidence – I’m sure Dennis is filling him in, as well. He seems to be a very sweet and charming boy, and I know his family is delightful, and if he plans to follow in his parents’ footsteps to become an Auror I can’t see how either your dad or I can have concerns regarding job security and financial position, the usual boring parent questions. Also, he’s not his uncle, Elsa, and you don’t have to be worried about whether seeing him will make me sad for a life I didn’t have. It’s been a very, very long time, and in that life, I wouldn’t have had you, so... I’m fine with it, and I’m very happy for you, both of you.”</p><p> </p><p>“I love him,” she whispers in response, and Demelza folds her into a hug, a bittersweet smile on her face.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next day Demelza wakes up early and visits a graveside she hasn’t been to in over a decade. She wants to be back before her students show for their lessons and before Elsa wakes up and is subsequently deputised into buying groceries and prepping for their dinner guests.</p><p> </p><p>She kneels next to the headstone, now wearing a bit with age, and places a customary rose at the base, remembering with a sudden flash how much Colin had unashamedly liked flowers.</p><p> </p><p>“Hi Col, it’s me again. I’m fairly sure if you’re watching from up there you already know what I’m here to say. I don’t know if I should apologise for not showing up in the last sixteen-odd years, but I think you’d understand, like you always did where I was concerned, so I’m not going to try. I wonder if I’ve changed so much that it would no longer be easy for you to get me, or would you always know me no matter how much I changed? But yeah, I digress. I met Dennis after so long because our kids are dating, full circle, eh? Another Elsa and Colin running around here… he looks so much like you Col, I thought you were back for a second but I’m glad I can look past that to see him, it wouldn’t be fair to him or Elsa, otherwise.”</p><p> </p><p>She stands, brushing the soil from her knees. “It’s already shaping up to be a sunny day, Col, and I wish you were here to take pictures of the trees and the flowers and the birds, singing. I miss you still, and I love you lots, but I’m happy in my life and I’m happy for Elsa that she has a Colin of her own. Are you happy, Col? I hope you are. I can feel you right now, closer than I have in ages. It makes me feel warm. I love you, Col. Au Revoir…”</p><p> </p><p>She kisses her fingertips and brushes the stone, strangely warm under her touch, turning to go.</p><p> </p><p>Somewhere, somehow, she feels him smiling.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Fini.</em>
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